First off here are my engine specs:
b18c1 .02 overbore
pr3 pistons
refreshed head with valve job and milled .01
stock p72 ecu

I recently installed this engine and have about 400 miles on it. Its runnning fine except that I noticed that there is alot of black silt coming from the tail pipe which is very recent. In the first 200 miles it burned no oil but in the last 200 it has burned through 1 qt. I have an air/fuel ratio gauge and in the beginning it was reading where it should according to autometer but now it sits at full rich. I'm not sure if I should trust the gauge anyway.

Should I have upgraded the injectors and fpr and had the car tuned or am I ok. I have yet to do a compression check but I will do one asap. I am wondering why the engine would all of a sudden start running really rich. What's going with my engine?Any help is appreciated!

 

Any CEL's?

 

Nope, no cels at all!

 

Most likely you are running rich if its black smoke.

For the burning of the oil, you should burn a little the first few hundred miles of break-in

 

OK, I will double check my timing and do a compression check asap!

 

If you did the "slow break in" like you're not supposed to, it's quite possible that you smoothed the rings and bore enough that you'll always burn oil. An unfortunate but common issue.

 

Your motor has too much compression for P72 to run it safely.

Where is your base timing? Do you use VAFC or tuning?

What octane gas is in the car right now?

 

Damn where were you when I posted last month about needing to tune with my setup! I had several people tell me that I would be ok with no tuning. So it looks like I have to pull the motor out a second time. The first time I spun 3 rod bearings because of a bad oil pump and cracked a sleeve.

To answer your questions, the timing is at the red mark. I'm using a ctr pulley, not sure if that matters. Using 91 octane. I'm not using anything to tune but was told by several people it wasnt really needed. I guess the only way to see if I damaged anything would be to check the compression. The numbers should be at least 210psi with my compression right?


Modified by mekanism at 12:53 PM 12/15/2005


Modified by mekanism at 8:26 PM 12/15/2005

 

i'd put it on a dyno and get it tuned to be on the safe side.

 

Definately get a tune. Its not worth the money to wash down the cylinders ruin your engine.

 

So would a vafc be good enough or should I get hondata,crome etc.. to tune with? Also, can I somewhat tune it myself so I can drive the car to the dyno because I live about 2 hours from the nearest dyno?

 

I'm also assuming that I will need an adjustable fpr, cam gears,and injectors right?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mekanism &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">So would a vafc be good enough or should I get hondata,crome etc.. to tune with? Also, can I somewhat tune it myself so I can drive the car to the dyno because I live about 2 hours from the nearest dyno?</TD></TR></TABLE>

You can find a basemap to get you to the dyno

 

Well if you have B18c1 with .25 over pr3 pistons, and you did not deck the block (b18c1 head and block correct) and you are using 3 layer head gasket you should be around 11.5:1. Now there is probably +- some, but this should be good for this discussion. Now you had some milling done on your head, so go on the + side...

If I am correct so far, than here it goes...

P72 under VTEC is a dog, sometimes it will bog down BAD, simply because it does not give enough timing, this is noticable under 2000 rpm and it will give you that bog down feeling when you lay into it in 1st gear rolling through 1000 rpm...

on the other hand once in VTEC P72 goes nuts, pumps the timing all the way to almost 30deg total if memory serves me right. For comparission sake B16 or type R will be around 26 deg total timing.

This is true so far if your base timing is set properly at 16 deg or so, if not...

What cams are you running? This is VERY IMPORTANT. If they are stock you are most likely detonating in VTEC with P72 and 91 octane.

If you have something like skunk stage 2 or so (stage 2 cam) you might be dropping you dynamic CR just enough to bleed off some of that pressure and be marginal...

Anyway, long story short depending on your cams it will depend what PSI you get on compression gauge. if you are on stock cams your motor should be well over 250psi, if you have some wild cams you might be around 200PSI.

To give you an example 11.5 b18c1 with stage 1 cams (BC3+) will give around 260psi right accross with spark plugs out on all 4 and WOT while cranking...


Do not use VAFC with your motor, I do not mind VAFC personally, but if you need a lot of fuel correction it will mess up your timing big time. On one hand if you lean out it will increase the timing, which will detonate your engine apart, if you add fuel (vafc is spotty with this) it will reduce timing and it can easily burn chunks off of your exhaust valves.


Anyway I do not feel like typing this much, but I can see that you are looking for help on this. To make long story short, depending on your cams, check your compression, if it checks out, chip your p72 it is easy, moates.net sells the stuff and use CROME.

if you get this far I'll give you more pointers on tuning, but for now good start is 25 deg total timing in VTEC or simply copy b16 profile, it will give you nice below VTEC and safe VTEC timing. Do not copy fuel.
Buy WB sensor I think you can get one for $199 or so.

Visit pgmfi.org.

Try at least to do it right, if it blows up you will learn something. Runing around on P72 you will not learn a thing and it WILL blow up if it did not already...

 

Thanks for the help, I really need it. I tried checking the compression today but I think the gauge I'm using is messing up. I keep getting different readings from the same cylinder. The most I got was 270psi dry. I didnt even bother adding oil because 270 is already pretty good. However, since I dont trust my gauge I will see if I can get a hold of another on and re check it on monday.

I am running the stock cams and gears and stock fpr. Should I get these things upgraded along with Chrome. Also since I plan on changing the stock manifold to the Blox should I switch to a p28 chipped ecu that's setup for chrome already? I have heard that the p72 isnt good to run with a different manifold. Also is a wideband really necessary because I'm somewhat on a budget.

 

WB is more important than enything else you bought for that engine.

I run p72 crome with BLOX IM,CROME does not care if it is P72 or P28 the only difference is that you can enable knock board on p72.
You can get p28 setup already if that is easier for you, you'll have to disable knock board if you use p72 base rom. Knock board is junk anyway.
If you are on the budget you might want to take your car to have it tuned, and use whatever your tuner supports.

Do not play with WB, change cams, yours will make good tq, but they will not make good HP and they can detonate easy, it is safer for you to run slightly bigger cams

for FPR you cab get one of those cheap B&M they work great, but I doubt you will need it before you get stage 2 cams at least...

 

So the first thing I should buy is the wideband and crome? I will probably just get the p28 so I have my stock p72 as a spare. Then run a basemap to get my a/f good enough to get it to the dyno. Does this sound right? And I didnt quite understand this sentence, maybe I'm just retarded!

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ninor &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Do not play with WB, change cams, yours will make good tq, but they will not make good HP and they can detonate easy, it is safer for you to run slightly bigger cams
</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

I did not express my self properly. Get WB and tune, do not play around with this.
Getting bigger cams will make your tuning easier and safer, give you slightly more margin.

When you get crome, load base p72 map, cut and paste timing map from base 203bin (b16).

take some timing out from under the vtec, leave vtec timingalone. Set to 16 you distributor timing.

Hook up WB and tune AFR.
this will give you 98% of a complete tune...

 

Well, the soot is obviously from runnign a bit rich. Also if you are using a test pipe instead of a cat you are goign to have soot no matter what. Just a fact of life. I wouldn't worry too much unless its excessive. On the oil consumption.....no clue. Its not good though. Only way it will burn oil is if some is getting past the rings.

 

Hopefully I can get a hold of another pressure gauge this weekend because I really dont trust my compression readings. Sometmes I would get as low as 150psi and others as high as 300 varying between all 4 cylinders. I figure I need to make sure the engine is healthy before even thinking about tuning it!

 

what oil are you using. i burned oil the first 500 miles then i canged to 10w-30 and it doesnt burn no more

 

I'm using 5w-30 castrol gtx.

 

5-30 Mobil1 synth is what I've used on all of my motors for the last 2 years. never had any oil consumption problems

 

I bought a new compression tester today and did a check. I decided to switch to non detergent nd-30 oil to see if the rings would seat a little better. I drove the car about 35 miles keeping the rpms below 4000.
Results-
Dry:
CYL 4 3 2 1
PSI 210 205 230 205

Wet:
CYL 4 3 2 1
PSI 225 215 235 215

So it looks like my rings arent seating properly. I think I will go ahead and tune and see if things get worse after the tuning. I really dont feel like pulling apart the engine again.